Category Archives: UK news

Ursula von der Leyen: hard Brexit would be massive blow for both sides

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Exclusive: newly elected EU chief suggests there could be emergency help for Ireland

The European commission’s new president has said a hard Brexit would have “massively negative consequences” for both Britain and the EU, and said Brussels could provide emergency help for nations such as Ireland that bear the brunt of such an outcome.

In her first interview since narrowly being approved for the post by the European parliament on Tuesday, Ursula von der Leyen said the withdrawal deal concluded between Theresa May and the commission’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michael Barnier, would remain the basis of any future talks.

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Boris Johnson refuses to answer questions over party in Lebedev mansion

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Potential PM will not say whether he had police protection during weekend in Italy while foreign secretary

Boris Johnson is refusing to give details of a trip he made to Italy when he was foreign secretary for a weekend-long party held at a restored castle owned by the media billionaire and socialite Evgeny Lebedev.

The Guardian has learned that the likely next prime minister went to Palazzo Terranova in Perugia in April 2018 at the invitation of Lebedev, the owner of the London Evening Standard and the Independent who is renowned for hosting glamorous events for the world’s rich and famous.

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Asos issues third profit warning in seven months as shares fall

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Online fashion retailer blames glitch in rollout of European and US automated warehouses

Shares in Asos tumbled on Thursday as the online fashion retailer issued its third profits warning in seven months, blaming problems with the rollout of its new automated warehouses.

The group said sales were hit by the overhaul of warehouses in Berlin and Atlanta, which left the firm struggling to keep up with demand. It now expects to make profits of £30m to £35m this year, far below City forecasts of £55m.

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Boris Johnson’s no-deal Brexit threat risks being ignored by the EU

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Michel Barnier says the UK will ‘have to face the consequences’ of crashing out

Boris Johnson’s suggestion he could use the threat of no deal to win an improved Brexit deal for the UK risks falling on deaf ears in Brussels, the EU’s top negotiator has suggested.

Michel Barnier suggested, in an interview carried out in May for the BBC Panorama programme, that Theresa May’s negotiating team never tried to use the spectre of a no-deal Brexit despite calls from Tory hardliners to do so.

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Northern Irish unionists fear post-Brexit land grabs

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Report identifies Zimbabwe-style seizures as key concern in the event of a united Ireland

Some unionists in Northern Ireland fear Zimbabwe-style land seizures by Irish nationalists if the region joins a united Ireland, according to a report that lays bare anxieties about any Brexit-fuelled breakup of the UK.

Farmers and others with Protestant and unionist backgrounds worry that Catholic and nationalist neighbours would claim their land in a cultural, economic and political takeover by Dublin – “the mother of all fears”, the report found.

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African lives are measured in fighting UK visa rejections | Nesrine Malik

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The Home Office’s hostile handling of visiting African professionals doesn’t bode well for Global Britain

An African passport is the most egalitarian of documents, in that if you have one then class, employment status and professional invitations from the country you are visiting all count for nothing. From university professors to unskilled labourers, anyone holding a passport issued by a country in Africa will be treated the same by UK border officers. They will also show no compassion for or recognition of the need for people to be reunited with family or to see friends.

In fact it’s not too far-fetched to say an African passport is a no-travel document. Even countries within Africa are miserly with each other. I am a veteran visa applicant, and I can tell you there is no respite. A European visa is as prohibitively hard to secure as one to a neighbouring African country. My Sudanese passport meant that I had to become an Olympian visa-applier in order to visit, study and settle in the UK. You can’t slouch with a passport from a country on a terror watchlist.

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‘Bill Clinton talks loudly, fails to act’: envoys’ barbed missives to John Major

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Foreign leaders Boris Yeltsin and François Mitterrand also subjects of gossipy anecdotes, papers show

Confidential and sometimes unflattering appraisals of foreign leaders have been a staple of the diplomatic cable long before the leaking of the former US ambassador Kim Darroch’s emails.

Boris Yeltsin, Bill Clinton, François Mitterrand and the Saudi royal family were all subjects of candid pen portraits and gossipy anecdotes during John Major’s premiership.

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Manchester Arena bomber’s brother held in UK after extradition

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Hashem Abedi, 20, is in custody after being sent back from Libya over alleged role in attack

The brother of the Manchester Arena terrorist Salman Abedi is in police custody after being extradited from Libya to the UK to face court over his alleged role in the 2017 attack.

Hashem Abedi landed at an unspecified London airport on Wednesday, escorted by British police officers, after months of work to ensure his extradition to the UK.

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Boris Johnson’s support for EU revealed in Leon Brittan letter

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No 10 frontrunner wrote ‘pro-European letter’ to Tory peer’s widow a year before campaigning for leave

Boris Johnson revealed his support for the European Union’s single market in “a pro-European” letter written the year before he decided to campaign for leave, it has emerged.

The likely prime minister’s pro-EU market sympathies were said to be revealed in a letter of condolence to the wife of the late Tory politician Sir Leon Brittan, who died in January 2015.

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No 10 urges Iran to let Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s family visit

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Labour MP raises fears British-Iranian woman being tortured into signing forced confession

Downing Street has urged Iran to allow the family of a detained British-Iranian woman to visit amid fears that she is being tortured to sign a forced confession after she was moved to an isolated psychiatric ward.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe was moved to the mental health ward of Iman Khomeini hospital on Monday – a move that the family initially welcomed after months of calling for her to get medical treatment.

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MPs say ’embarrassing and insulting’ UK visa system damages Africa relations

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Cross-party inquiry finds people from African countries often perceive reasons given for failed applications as biased or discriminatory

British MPs have warned that the UK visitor visa system is “broken” and doing “severe damage” to UK-Africa relations.

The problems faced by experts trying to visit the UK are so widespread that many Africans believe the Home Office to be prejudiced against them and deliberately trying to reduce visitor numbers.

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Found: British author of 50-year-old message in a bottle that washed up in Australia

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South Australian man and his son found the bottle, which was dropped from an ocean liner by 13-year-old Paul Gilmore in 1969

The British author of a message in a bottle that recently washed up on the South Australian coast after more than half a century has been found – and he is currently out to sea, his sister says.

South Australian man Paul Elliot and his son Jyah told ABC radio they found the bottle on the Eyre Peninsula’s west coast recently while fishing.

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Dunedin rolls with it after losing world’s steepest street title

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Mayor of New Zealand city says a tweak to signage might be all that’s needed, while some living on Baldwin Street are relieved

The New Zealand city of Dunedin has sought to look on the bright side after losing its claim to have the world’s steepest street to a town in Wales, with its mayor saying: “The street certainly hasn’t got any less steep as a result of the decision.”

This week, Guinness World Records officially stripped Dunedin’s Baldwin Street of the title and instead awarded it to Harlech in Wales. Its street, Ffordd Pen Llech, has a gradient of 37.45% at its steepest point – 2.5% steeper than Baldwin Street.

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Lunar eclipse 2019: from Australia to the UK, stargazers enjoy bright side of the moon

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Photographers from Sydney to Brasilia capture July’s stunning partial lunar eclipse

Stargazers around the world have enjoyed a view of a global lunar eclipse, delighting people from Dehli to Dublin.

The partial eclipse was visible in nearly every part of the world except for North America and the polar climes of Greenland and northern Russia.

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Police letting down older victims of crime, say inspectors

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Report says police have only superficial understanding of crimes against older people

Older victims of crime are being let down by the police and the wider criminal justice system, according to the first inspection report on the age group.

The police have only a “superficial understanding” of the crimes committed against older people, the report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services and Her Majesty’s Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate says.

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UK wage growth hits 11-year high as self-employment total surges – business live

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British worker are getting the biggest pay rises in a decade, as jobless rate remains at 44-year low. But the market may be cooling....

New @ONS stats show that:

- the employment level is at a record high
- there are 3.7m more people in work than in 2010
- wages have grown faster than inflation for almost a year
- female unemployment has fallen to a new record low of 3.6% pic.twitter.com/V9C5NMXW9l

Andy Bruce of Reuters has also spotted that rising self-employment is making up for a drop in the number of employed workers.

Cause for concern?

That there was any employment growth at all in 3 months to May is down to a hefty increase in self-employment.

Employee jobs declined at fastest rate since 2011. pic.twitter.com/cg05f02Az2

Along these lines, looks clear that vacancies have peaked already. pic.twitter.com/t06diHVMRn

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Scotland records huge rise in drug-related deaths

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Twenty seven per cent rise to 1,187 deaths puts country on par with US in terms of per capita fatalities

Scotland’s drug-related death toll has increased by 27% over the past year to reach a record high of 1,187, putting the country on a par in terms of the fatality rate per capita with the United States, where synthetic opioids like fentanyl have devastated drug-using populations.

The death rate is now more than three times that of England and Wales, and has more than doubled since 2008, when there were 574 deaths.

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EU expected to reject outright Johnson and Hunt’s backstop plan

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Next PM will be told in ‘no uncertain terms’ that axing backstop amounts to no deal

Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt’s Brexit plan to axe the Irish border backstop from the withdrawal agreement will be rejected outright by the European Union, EU sources have said.

Informed sources say that it is doomed to failure and if the next prime minister goes to Brussels with such a plan, he will be told in “no uncertain terms” that it amounts to a declaration of no deal.

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Ryanair to cut flights due to Boeing 737 Max crisis

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Budget airline says it plans to close some bases and will carry fewer passengers

Ryanair has warned delays to deliveries of Boeing’s 737 Max aircraft will reduce passenger numbers next year and it plans to downsize or close bases at some airports as a result.

Europe’s biggest budget carrier has ordered 135 of the 737 Max models, which remain grounded after two crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia killed a total of 346 people. Boeing has yet to convince regulators that software modifications are sufficient to ensure the plane’s safety.

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‘People think I’m very odd’: how Ibrahim Mahama brought Ghana’s past to Manchester

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From second-hand train seats to old school cupboards, the artist has transported discarded objects from his west African homeland to create a ‘parliament of ghosts’

‘We’re haunted all the time by ghosts of the past,” says Ibrahim Mahama as we sit on dirty old plastic second-class Ghana Railways carriage seats in Manchester’s Whitworth Art Gallery. Even these seats from an abandoned railway? “Especially these,” he says, smiling.

Mahama, a junkyard utopian whose art involves recycling stuff that’s lost its purpose, bought up rows and rows of these seats. He packed them into shipping containers and sent them on a 5,000-mile trip, from his west African homeland to the Whitworth, along with some school cupboards no longer fit for purpose, exercise books of children now grown up, and the minutes of Ghanaian parliamentary debates now deemed obsolete.

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